


Musicalities

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Multi, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1248277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small stories inspired by songs, most post-series or AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What I Did For Love

_I can’t regret what I did for love_

 

Harry’s eyes are impossibly wide and blue - sky-blue, not Tully-river-blue - when he finds them.

Petyr’s blood is red - dark wine-red, not bright fire-red like her hair should be - on the floor and her hands and the blade of the knife Harry gave her

"Sweetling," he says gently, "give the knife to me."

"I will not harm anyone else," she says evenly, dropping the knife into her bath - the hot water is tinged pink, but otherwise there is no evidence that anything is amiss. She reaches in, removes it from the water and dries it on the hem of her skirts. "You can have this back, my lord - I have no more need of it."

Harry takes it silently, tucking it away somewhere, and he politely turns his back when she begins to strip away her dress - for a man with a bastard daughter, a man with such a reputation for womanising, he is oddly bashful, her sweet knight of the Vale, Lord of the Eyrie - and he remains there, facing the door with his hands folded neatly behind his back, until she has thrown her bloodied gown into the massive hearth and set it alight, until she has pulled on a clean gown, one close enough in make and colour to the one currently smouldering and flaring away to nothing that none save Sansa would know the difference.

"You may turn about now," she calls, soft as a whisper and warm as her newly-undyed hair. Harry found the means for her, has found so much and done so much for her. "I have something for you - one more surprise."

The High Septon hates the Lannisters enough to keep her presence here a secret even while annulling her marriage to Lord Tyrion, and Harry is practically glowing with pure glee at the realisation that she is free, that they are both free.

"To Winterfell, and the Eyrie," he says, pouring a cup of wine for them each and raising his in toast.

"To freedom," Sansa agrees, tipping her cup to his and laughing when he pulled her close for a kiss.

Petyr’s blood is still red on the ground when they turn around, Harry’s eyes still blue when she looks to him, and her blue eyes are red with false tears as Harry ushers in the many gathered lords and ladies of the Vale to the room where Sansa, poor Sansa, discovered his viciously murdered corpse.


	2. Human

_often I lie wide awake, think of things I can make but I don’t seem to have the parts to build them_

 

Will’s world and Lyra’s alike are… Are like period pieces, Mary thinks, those strange dramas her mother always liked so much, where everyone is a hundred, two hundred years in the past, and speaks with funny accents and uses odd turns of phrase.

Mary tosses her I-Ching sticks and watches them fall, reads them, tucks them away in her pack. None of this makes sense, and she’s lost without all her  _stuff,_ but she supposes she can manage.

That’s why she decides to stay with Will, when the time comes - she knows things that can help his mother, knows what specialists are going to be successes and which will be failures, and what Will considers a huge sum of money is nothing to Mary - for once, she’s glad of inflation.

Or at least, she thinks she knows them. Her world is so much like a future of Will’s that she has to believe, she  _has_ to.

She makes one last trip home, grabs the things that will help (and empties her bank account), and then comes back.

She kisses Lyra’s forehead and smooths down her hair, and then she stands back and lets her and Will have their goodbye. 


	3. Broken Crown

_Touch my mouth and hold my tongue/I’ll never be your chosen one_

 

When Robert Baratheon dies, and his brothers die, someone whispers how strange it is that his children are all Lannister when there’s never been a Baratheon that didn’t look it.

But if there are no Baratheons (for who would trust a girl child to hold the throne?) then who is there to rule?

And so it was that many turned away from the Stormlands, turned to the North, and Eddard Stark as the last living leader of the rebellion became a talisman to keep the Targaryens away.

But the Lannisters were not so easily removed from the power into which they had sunk claws that were long and sharp, my lord, as long and sharp as yours.

It came to war, Lannisters and what allies they could dredge up when proof of incest by means of a King’s bastards was produced against all who would see a just King, a fair King, a King so just that he assumed all other men were just and died on a Kingslayer’s golden blade.

Leaving behind a son barely a man who had already wearied of war such as he had been born into, a son who sued for peace on the understanding that through him, the Lannisters might retain some measure of their power.

Myrcella hated her gentle husband for the pity in his eyes, and the wary guardedness when he came to her bed, but hating him was difficult when he defended her from the court’s cruelty.


	4. It ended on an oily stage

_But I do understand why they’re looking at you/As if you ever really cared_

 

Willas’ leg ached because the stand seats were shit, but he didn’t really mind too much. At least when he sat here, nobody seemed to notice him much, not even when Garlan and Leo jumped up when everyone else was sitting down, a gold-and-green tornado spinning around whenever the Roses scored.

He loved coming to watch Loras play, even if he had to fight off consuming jealousy to get to that point every time match day rolled around.  _It could have been me,_ his heart said, while his mind said  _no, arsehole, you should never have set foot on a rugby pitch after your knee fucked up the first time, but you were a stupid bollocks and you did, so here’s your bed so lie down in it._

Once he reminded himself of that, it was easy. Loras was a joy to watch, and Willas could easily admit that his brother was twice the kicker he’d ever been, converting nineteen of every twenty tries and missing maybe one in seven penalties.

And that was without his kicking during play. Beautiful.

Willas’ leg ached because the stand seats were shit, and his heart ached because he was so jealous that sometimes he couldn’t breathe, but he loved watching Loras play because he loved rugby, and if he let his not being able to play sour that, how could he really call himself a sportsman?


	5. Runaway

_I was feeling sad/Can’t help looking back/Highways flew by/Run run away/No sense of time_

 

"We have to go," that was all he’d had time to say, and now they’re on a train with her wonderful hair plaited and tucked under an ugly hat and his cane discarded for a battered walking stick, because her hair and his cane were their hallmarks and they’re too obvious, too well known.

(The Lannisters are coming, and they have to go. They have to get away.)

She had hair dye waiting, in the bag she kept packed under her bed, and when they stopped that first night in a motel (not a hotel, where they’d be expected to stay) she went into the bathroom and washed her red hair black, and then took a scissors to it and to his, and threw his razor in the bin. Better they looked as little like themselves as possible, better he not use his cards or real ID, better they pretended that she was still missing, that he hadn’t found her and hidden her and fallen in love with her.

New York was far behind by the time they gave in and slept side by side in the same bed in their crappy motel room, just slept, not even touching but hyper aware of one another.

(The Lannisters are coming, and they have to go. They have to get away.)

It wasn’t until Detroit that they thought of posing as man and wife, buying her a plain goldish ring to use as a prop.

_Why are you doing this why are you helping me why am I so important to you why why why_

He kissed her because he needed her to understand. She kissed him back because she needed to be understood.

(The Lannisters are coming, and they have to go. They have to get away.)

Garlan met them in Seattle, when they were both so tired of running but they had to keep going, because it wasn’t safe to stop.

"We got you papers," he said, handing over an overstuffed brown envelope. "Passports, travel visas - your dual citizenship helped, I guess," he added to Willas, and for once Willas was grateful that he’d been born in France rather than faintly amused by how much it embarrassed his parents given how soon he’d been born after their wedding. "And as soon as it’s safe, you can come home."

Sansa leaned her head on his shoulder as they took a taxi to the airport on Garlan, the goldish ring glinting on her finger each time they passed under a streetlight.

(The Lannisters are here, and they can’t go. They can’t get away.)


	6. Daydreamer

_He is a real lover of making up the past/And feeling up his girl/Like he’s never felt her figure before_

 

"Rome," he murmurs into her shoulder. "Rome, next."

Sansa sighs and stretches out her legs, squirming as he rubs more sunscreen into her back and lets his fingertips trail over her skin just enough to tickle her.

"I think we should stay here," she breathes, leaning back against his chest and smiling. "Forever and a day, you and me and the ocean."

He laughs, and she closes her eyes as he begins rubbing the sunscreen into her collarbone, her breastbone, the tops of her breasts and then around to her bare stomach, taut-stretched skin and tremors of movement and them underneath.

"And the baby," he reminds her. "I need to get you somewhere closer to a maternity hospital before I lose my mind."

"Not yet," she points out, purring when he traces along the edge of her bikini bottoms. "Not for two whole months yet."

"And here I thought you wanted to face everyone before Junior was born," he teases. "You’ve taken to eloping far better than I would have thought, darling."

Sansa opens her eyes and looks at the sparkling water of the Mediterranean, the bleached sand of the little cove behind the villa in which Willas’ grandfather graciously agreed to hide their presence, the swell of her pale bump and Willas’ dark-freckled hands on top of it, and she smiles.

"How could I not," she asks, "when it’s like this?"

And for the first time ever, she doesn’t even mind the peeling skin on the bridge of her nose.


	7. Tainted Love

_Now I know I’ve got to run away/I’ve got to get away_

 

Robb was always bigger and stronger than her, but not faster. Never faster.

Now, though, he doesn’t have to stop.

She does.


	8. All Night

_The seasons changed/Our house will stay the same, yeah stay the same_

 

Raleigh had lived in the same house his whole life.

It was big, and seemed mostly to be made of wood even though he knew there was a whole heap of stone behind the panelling, and it had been built by his and Yancy and Jaz’s great-great-grandfather.

The tea room Mako built on the south-western wall fit in perfectly, all smooth logs outside and polished wooden walls and floor inside.

 

* * *

 

 

Mako liked that there was room for all of her family to come and visit with comfort in Raleigh’s house, in  _their_ home.

It reminded her strangely of her parents’ home in Tanegashima, where she had lived so  _happily_  before the cancer and the car crash, not because of its situation or aesthetic or size, but because it was old, and a home, and as much a part of the family as she was and more, because generations of Beckets were born and raised here, just as generations of  _her_ family lived and loved in the house that she now owned, where Raleigh learned that she liked to paint and she learned that Raleigh liked to dream.

 

* * *

 

 

Stacker liked Mako and Raleigh’s house, even if Anchorage was too far away and too cold for his liking. It suited them - it was a little odd, a little off-key just like them, and it shouldn’t have worked but it did, just like them.

It made Mako happy, and Stacker had wanted nothing more than that since the moment the ink dried on the adoption papers.


	9. Daniel in the Den

_And you thought the lions were bad, well they tried to kill my brothers/And for every king that died, oh, they would crown another_

 

Rhaenys was a princess, once upon a time.

With a mother, and a father, and a brother. And an uncle, too, and grandparents.

Now she was a rebel, one with a small group of supporters - other uncles, and cousins, too, and a few loyal friends - and an orphan, and a sister with no brothers.

Her father had taken a woman not his, and his family had paid the cost of his greed.

But Rhaenys made do - she was in no position to reclaim the throne that was rightfully hers from the usurpers, but she could cause what havoc was within her power, could do some little thing for the common folk that had supported her father against the rebels.

Rhaenys took what she could from the stags and the lions, and venison had never tasted so sweet from a silver platter in a palace as it did from a crude earthen bowl in a hut in the deep forest.


	10. Call Your Girlfriend

_Don’t you tell her how I give you something/That you never knew you missed_

 

Ned had been with Trys their whole lives, in one way or another, and he hadn’t ever considered that there was anyone else for him. He hadn’t ever needed to consider it - Trys was his best friend and his boyfriend and his perfect other half, and that was all he needed.

But then they went to college, and he met Arya, and he wondered if maybe he was a third, not a half.

Trys was all soft and elegant and beautiful, a musician and an artist, sweet by nature and warm of heart, but Arya, Arya was something else, sharp and bright and  _fast,_ all edges and angles and excitement to the comfort of Trys. 

He wanted both. He wanted everything. And he hated that.

But Arya had a girlfriend, pretty Alla who was so like Trys in so many ways. Ned liked Alla, too, liked her  _so much,_ but he saw himself reflected in Arya and that was so exciting, so thrilling, that Ned sometimes couldn’t breathe.

Trys and Alla had taken to hanging out when Ned and Arya became the freshmen mixed doubles team (and national champions), and Ned sometimes thought he saw something in them that reminded him of himself and Arya. Sometimes he glanced over between sets, while Arya was pouring water over her head and scrubbing her short, spiky hair with a towel, and Trys would be showing Alla something in his huge big manuscript copy, or Alla would be showing him something from her portfolio, and somehow it was exactly the same as Arya showing him the wrist movement for her  _lethal_ backswing, or him standing to her back and improving her overarm for her serve.

Game, set and match, and it took them all getting hammered after the national final to figure out that none of them were halves, but that they were all quarters.


	11. Hey Brother

_Hey brother, do you still believe in one another?/Hey sister, do you still believe in love I wonder?_

 

Sansa stayed firmly away from the King, sitting on the other side of the bizarre room as he enthused wildly with the strange man who had swept in ahead of the King’s aunt and her men and taken them to apparent safety in his curious box.

 _Bigger on the inside,_ she thought in wonder, folding her arms over her chest and staring about herself, trying to make sense of it all.

"Why did you take us?" she asked without meaning to, turning to her King (husband, it was still so impossible to consider him a King and herself his Queen when the Kings she knew best were golden, not silver).

The strange man - she thought he might be a Florent, with those ears - turned to her, his smile fading into a seriousness she had not expected of him.

"Because you have so much to give," he told her, crossing the floor to take her hands. "You both do - but you need time to find the goodness again, and I can give that to you."

Sansa was surprised by how willingly she took  _Aegon’s_ hand, when the strange man stepped away to attend to something or other on his mad round table.

"How can you do that?" Aegon asked, slipping in front of her, between her and the man.

"I’m the Doctor," he said enigmatically. "I know all  _sorts_ of things.


	12. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

_I wish you’d stop ignoring me because it’s sending me to despair/Without a sound yeah you’re calling me and I don’t think it’s very fair_

Garlan Tyrell was everything Leo’s dad wanted for her and nothing she wanted for herself. 

He was a jock - a super-jock, playing senior varsity football despite only being a junior, like her. He was loud and outgoing and friends with everyone - or at least, he thought he was, but really he was friends with the “right sort” of people the kind of people  _his_  father liked him to be friends with.

Garlan himself was an okay kind of guy, and he was cute as hell, but Leo just couldn’t stand the idea of having anything to do with that circle, the bitches and assholes who were  _lovely_ to her face but mocked her behind her back.

That was why she turned down Garlan’s invite to the winter formal. That was why she ignored the puppy-dogs he threw her way every time they met in the corridor or took their seats in Bio.

Then one day, his older brother, Willas, delivered a note in Garlan’s big, looping handwriting, looking deeply amused by it all as he tossed his hair and adjusted his crutches.

"He’s not as big a dick as he seems," he told her. "I promise, Leo, he’s actually a good guy - don’t judge him off his groupies."

And that was how Leo found herself standing in the lobby of the school, wearing a spring green dress with a yellow rose corsage tucked into her hair and Garlan Tyrell beaming beside her the night of the winter formal.


End file.
